Bad news and good news

A Survey USA poll has Jim Webb leading George Allen by a whopping 8 percentage points. That’s the bad news. The good news is that 38 percent of those polled were Democrats and 35 percent were Republicans. Riehl World View notes that in 2004, exit polls showed 39 percent of Virginia voters to be Republicans and only 35 percent to be Dems. So the Webb-Allen race, in all likelihood remains a toss up, as all of the other polls suggest.
Survey USA clearly isn’t worrying about party affiliation. Its last Virginia poll had a sample in which Repubs were 42 percent and Dems 35. And in the Maryland Senate race, Survey USA has consistently oversampled Republicans. For more than a month, it has shown Steele and Cardin just about dead even.
UPDATE: Today’s Survey USA poll has Cardin up by 3 points, still within the polls margin of error. This is the first time Cardin has been “ahead” in a Survey USA poll. Yet most observers believe that Steele has steadily been gaining on Cardin.